Smoking Romance
by OliviaLively
Summary: After a dangerous encounter, Amu meets a campus authority.Will this chance meeting blossom into something more? One shot! Amuto.


**LivLiv: I'm sorry, but I started writing In Little River when I was 14. That was five years ago, and in those years I've seen a lot, and a lot has changed me. You may have read about the trials and tribulations I've faced, you may know that I'm in university now, and you might come to the conclusion that writing a high school love story/mystery is kind of hard to come up with any inspiration in a world of adults.**

**However! I have new inspiration for new stories. As the original fandom of Shugo Chara is aging, I'm going to start writing more stories that don't center around Amu being a juvenile 12 year old, getting nervous in romantic situations and having no complexity of person. SO! One shots of Amuto romantic situations in an older, more mature spectrum are coming your way!**

Smoking Romance

Slipping on my black leather gloves, plugging in my overly priced headphones, grabbing my cigarettes and keys, I leave my dorm room and enter the drab hallway filled with drunken underage teenagers, laughing and flirting with each other. I smile and think, '_Ahh college Friday nights.'_ Still pumping with adrenaline from finishing my lit assignment, I skip down the stairs and out into the cold. It's only November, and I can't tell if that's a good or bad thing. Am I tired of school yet? Sometimes I feel like dropping out, getting a job and on with my life, but then I finish reading a chapter from one of my many textbooks, or print off an assignment due later that week and I feel that maybe I can do this for three more years. This is nothing. The point is, I don't know if it's only November and I still have five months of school until summer, or if it's only November and I still have so much school to look forward too.

Ugh, I'll give myself whiplash if I continue with this banter in my head.

I turn the corner and look ahead to the 'designated smoking area' to check if any of my friends are there. Nope, just strangers. Great.

As I trudge through the snow, I hear someone talking in a very loud voice. Great, I get to not enjoy a cigarette with a bunch of _drunk_ strangers. The pleasant adrenaline I was experiencing earlier has significantly dulled.

"AYY! A girl!" The boys cheered as I sat on an empty bench. "Hello beautiful, what is YOUR name? I'm Donny." One of them extends his hand to me, which I stare at for a bit before nodding and lighting a dart.

"Oooh she's _COLD_. Better try harder there, Don." A guy from the circle of boys says. Donny sits down right next to me and starts blabbering on about something. I wish I didn't have headphones that stick into your ears. I should invest in some beats so people would leave me alone. _Oh wait Amu you're broke._

The creep pulled my headphone out of my ear. "Can you hear me better now? Did you hear what I said?" He starts howling with laughter. Ugh, he probably said something perverted or sexist. "What are you listening to?" He asks as he puts the bud into his – probably dirty – ear. "Is this Lana Del GAY?" He spits in disgust. The boys in the circle on the other side of the pit buckle down in laughter at his charming choice of words.

"Uh-huh." I simply mumble.

"You know, you should come back to my place. I could show you some decent music."

"No thanks." I smile sarcastically at him.

He throws his burning smoke butt into the planter and turns his body to face mine. "I don't think I like your attitude."

"Ohohoho!" The guys all started laughing in prediction of what he would do.

Scared, I think of something I could say to get him from beating the crap out of me. "I-I'm working on a paper right now, I just needed a break." I lie.

"Ohhh… well, we could go back to your room." He winks.

"You're drunk."

"Nah," he says as one of the fiends from the circle passes him a joint. Oh, great. "It's Friday high day!" The barbarians cheered. I should have smelled that before I even got near this smoke pit.

Don't get me wrong, I've had a decent amount of alcohol and more drugs than I'd like to admit. I just have to be in a certain mood in order to partake in that type of recreation. That certain mood does not include the time I use to finish assignments.

"Don't tell me you're straight edge, you're smoking a cigarette!" He interrupts my thought.

"Please leave me alone." I say with bravery backing me up. Or is that stupidity? Selfishness?

They laugh in response. This isn't going to turn out well if I stay any longer. I only have half of a cigarette left, so I put it out as I wince, thinking about my account balance. "Bye." I say as I try in vain to skip away from the pit.

"Woah woah woah, where do you think you're going?" Donny says, stepping in front of me. His friends surround me.

Shit.

"Hey!" I hear someone call. I look for a figure beyond the crowd of boys surrounding me, crossing my gloved fingers. Nope, can't see a damn thing.

"What?!" Donny whips around to face my savior. I see him now, and he's tall. Hope rises within me. I'm going to be okay.

"Leave her alone. Go get stoned somewhere else, I've told you guys a thousand times. I'm going to have to write you up, I've given you too many breaks." He says authoritatively. He must be their residence assistant, the chaperone of whatever house they live in on residence.

"Oh really? Are you stupid? Seven to one," Donny laughs, and I count the seven men around me to confirm that. There's actually eight boys surrounding me including Donny. "I think you could maybe forget about that write up unless you want to get your ass kicked." Donny cracks his knuckles.

"How soon does one forget I was raised in Japan in a dojo." He laughs in return.

"Come on, Karate Kid," one of the guys charges at the R.A with his fists ready to punch. The R.A dodges the attack with the swiftness of a cat and barely lays a finger on the thug, but somehow that detainer of mine is lying on the ground, face down.

"So? Who's next?"

"Whatever Ikuto, go pound sand." Donny flips 'Ikuto' off and stalks away with his posse.

I look up at the boy that saved me. Wow, he's gorgeous. He has tousled, dark hair, and what I imagine to be muscular arms beneath his black pea coat. He looks at me with deep sapphire eyes and smiles. I try not to crumble under his gaze. I remember seeing him at residence orientation and thinking of how beautiful he was. He still is.

"You okay?" He asks, walking closer to me.

"Yeah," I breathe, thinking of what could of happened without him being there. "Thank you." I say genuinely, looking up at him. "Really, something awful could have happened if it weren't for you."

"It's my job." He says, and though he didn't say it coldly, it gave me uncomfortable chills. He makes me nervous, but not in a scared way like Donny did. He gives me butterflies.

"That's right. What house is yours?"

"The Knights. Full of a bunch of jerkoffs like those guys. Of course my boss filled my house with thugs." He explains.

"What year?"

"Third." He looks me up and down, but now in a 'checking a girl out' kind of way. He was analyzing me. "What year are you? Second?"

"No, I'm a first year. I took a year off to work, though."

"That explains it. I'm a fourth year."

"Major?" I ask.

"Engineering, you?"

"Poli-Sci and Law, but I take English and History as well."

He whistles lowly and says, "Busy girl!"

"Yeah, which explains why I'm not intoxicated like those guys or the rest of my floor. And maybe the rest of campus."

"I admire that in a girl." He smiles. "I mean, person." He corrects himself. Woah, is he hitting on me? We're back on the bench at the pit, we're alone, and he's really cute and my heart is beating and it feels good.

"You mind if I smoke?" He asks, reaching into his pockets. "Oh, obviously not." He laughs at himself. I nod and reach into my own pockets for my cigarettes.

I laugh before I say, "I was so scared when they were talking to me that I put my dart out early to run away." I push the cardboard to reveal an empty pack. "Dammit."

Ikuto, seeing this, hands me his.

"I couldn't." I immediately respond.

"Take one, no worries." He shrugs.

"But the ones you have are expensive!" To which he responds with a carefree look.

"You've had a rough night, go on."

I sigh and pull one out of the nearing-empty pack. Lighting it, I shoot him a half smile and thank him.

"Really, it's no trouble." He stuffs the pack in his pocket along with his hands. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Oh, uh, it's Amu, Amu Hinamori."

"I'm Ikuto Tsukiyomi. So you must be Japanese as well, with a name like that."

"Yeah, my parents immigrated here. Where in Japan were you born?"

"A small town by Kyoto. My family moved here when I was 11."

"Do you miss it?" I ask.

"Not so much, I mean, when you move that young, you eventually lose touch with your friends."

"Yeah, I can vouch for that." I laugh bitterly, thinking about Tadase. Tadase was my childhood friend, but I lost contact with him after I moved.

"Oh?"

"Well, it's the same for me too, I mean. And I'm too nervous to even add him on facebook."

"How old were you when you moved?"

"Oh, well I was a bit older, just 13."

"Oh I see, you had a crush on him." He teases.

I'm about to protest, but there isn't any use. It's as if the guy can see right through me. "Yeah, so what?"

"Nothing." He hums. "You should add him. He'll be able to see how cute you got."

He IS hitting on me. I would have slapped him or something, but I'm so flattered, I just can't.

"Yeah?" I ask instead, girlishly.

"Well why else would those creeps behave that way if you weren't attractive?" He smirks. "I'm not hitting on you, I'm stating a fact."

I can't stop myself from saying, "Oh."

He chuckles and says, "Are you disappointed?"

"No!" I immediately respond.

"Even so, there isn't anything we can do about it."

"About what?" I ask. This guy's a jerk but I can't help being drawn to him.

"About my finding you attractive."

Wait. He finds me attractive? Him personally? Gush gush gush. "And why's that?" I turn on my flirtatious side.

"I'm an R.A. I can't date first years." He shrugs again.

"Oh." I say in defeat. "Well… can we be friends at least?" I ask.

"Aren't we already? Did that free smoke mean nothing to you?"

"No, it meant everything."

We gaze into each other's eyes, and it's all very romantic for maybe five seconds until I feel a burning sensation in my leg, to which I yelp.

"Oh!" I exclaim as I quickly dust the embers off my leg. My cigarette burned a hole through my yoga pants.

"You all good?" He asks, smiling in amusement.

"Yep. It's all taken care of." I relax back into the bench, looking off into the parking lot.

"Hey," he says to get my attention. I turn to him and his whole body is facing mine. Before I can ask what he wanted, his lips press to mine for three seconds of bliss. That is, until he gets up and pats me on the head.

"Don't tell anyone. I still have some rounds to finish," and by rounds, I guess he means the R.A's job of monitoring campus, "you want to meet me back here in an hour?"

"Yeah, I'll be here."


End file.
